


Monsters in the Shadows

by janboy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gore, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 20:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17946824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janboy/pseuds/janboy
Summary: Arno Griez lives a modest life in the village of Cambrail. The fate of the village, his family, and himself, changes drastically with the coming of nightfall.





	Monsters in the Shadows

Cambrail was quiet. The evening fell upon the village like the peaceful tide against the shore, gently overtaking the sand with its soothing presence. The fading rays of dusk were muted by thick clouds. Small orbs of light began to spring up in scattered splotches around the village, as candles were lit inside the homes behind dirty glass windows. Work was modest and hands-on in Cambrail, and every evening was a return for those who worked since the early light of sunrise. Respite, time with family, and rest were the rewards of a day’s labour, all until the next day began. 

Arno’s finger was looped in a small candle-holder as he stood before the window in his room. His eyes ran over the village, taking in the peaceful air that came with nightfall as he did every night. He could see light from within the drapes of the home across the street, the Morgans, they had come over for supper the night before. 

Down the way, Arno saw Rothren riding his horse towards his home. He saw the older man hurriedly tie his horse to the fence and rush inside. A moment later, those same dim glows of candlelight began to spark up about his windows. 

_ Strange. Rothren is part of the village guard… Perhaps he was late for dinner.  _

Gradually, Arno’s gaze shifted from the various homes in Cambrail and it rose towards the distance. Past the mixture of wooden and stone gates that surrounded the immediate village, a dense forest covered the entirety of the western horizon. It was called Noosewood. Supposedly, centuries ago, people had attempted to forge a pathway into the wood to create a settlement. A couple of weeks later, they were all found fleshless, picked clean to the bone with ropes around their necks. Since then, the extent of ventures into Noosewood were the occasional hunting trips for game. 

Some nights, Arno felt like the darkness cast by the shadows of Noosewood were inching closer towards Cambrail. The majority of the trees that Arno could see were completely barren, the atmosphere of density that Noosewood gave off was from the proximity of one tree to the other, and how each branch seemed to be interwoven with the one next to it. 

A decade ago, when Arno was only twelve, he and his two older sisters would challenge one another to see who could last the longest within the woods, and who could travel the deepest into it. Arno was daring then. It seemed that over the years, his father’s warnings about the woods had time to set in. Now, Arno didn’t even spend time on the western walls of Cambrail. 

Arno looked down at his hand holding the candle. Calluses and dirt caked into his skin told the tale of how he spent his days now.

“Arno! Wash up and come eat!”

Arno extinguished the small candlelight with a quiet puff and he headed for the washroom.

 

* * *

As the dim light of his window went out, on the fringes of the Cambrail wall, a shadow from Noosewood seemed to inch forward. The woods shuddered as though a breeze chilled their spine, and then the forest was still again. With no more than a strangled gasp, another type of light was extinguished.

 

* * *

While many families of Cambrail used the evening meal as a time of comfort and relaxation, in the Griez household, dinner was a gauntlet within itself. 

“Arno!” His mother said as Arno sat himself in his seat, “did you even wash your hands? I can see dirt beneath your fingernails from here.”

“Mama… we pull these things out of the dirt,” Arno picked up a boiled potato and waved it at her, “and eat them. A little more dirt is good for you.” 

He felt a quick slap against the back of his hand from his left. Arno’s sister, Marie, shook his head at him disapprovingly.    


“You are gross, Arno.”

He shrugged, a half-smile stuck to his lips. 

Across the table, seated beside his silent and chewing father, Arno’s oldest sister sat with a few pieces of parchment on the table beside her bowl. 

With a spoonful of broth in his mouth, Arno scooted his chair to his right. The wood grinded against wood, and he could see his mother roll her eyes as he inched closer to her. 

“Mama,” Arno began, his whisper purposefully loud enough for the rest of his family to hear, “you tell me I’m dirty because I didn’t clean my hands. But Rosaline is reading the letters Patrick wrote her promising sultry love-making should she agree to marry.” 

At that, Marie let out a snort of laughter and she spilled her cup of water on the table. A tired smile crept across his father’s lips. His mother though, she let out an audible gasp and instantly pushed his chair away. 

“Dear brother,” Rosaline finally said, still eating while keeping her eyes glued to the parchment, “these  _ salacious love letters _ are Cambrail’s ledgers. I’m checking them for the constable.” 

Just as Arno’s mouth opened to make another remark, a shrill cry pierced the air. It pierced through the windows, the walls and floorboards, it was a harrowing cry that seemed to send tremors through each person at the table. They all froze, Arno and Rosaline mid-chew. Slowly, Arno’s mother and father rose from their seats and began to walk towards the window that faced the center of the village. Arno, Marie, and Rosaline shortly followed after them. 

Each of them walked near soundlessly, as though they were afraid to disturb the air again, scared to even let out a sound with each breath. The wooden floorboards creaked occasionally with their steps, and an unnatural wave of fear began to set within Arno’s chest. His mother reached for the drape that covered the window, Arno could see a slight shake in her arm as she extended it, then she pulled the drape to the side. 

There was a split-second where a dark shape blocked the outside of the window, and then the glass broke and they were all thrown to the side. A wave of force pushed Arno to the ground, as did the stumbling arms and legs of his sister and father. That sound of glass being shattered echoed in Arno’s mind, one second intervals looped in his brain as the sharp noise played again and again. It was only after his back hit the ground that Arno realized the noise was from outside, other windows on other homes being broken into. 

Another cry rang in Arno’s ears, this time from much closer. Arno turned his head to the left and saw his mother on the ground, with two talons pinned into her shoulders. Blood welled out from around the jagged claws, and Arno looked up to see a winged beast mounted on top of her. It was about four feet tall. Its limbs were boney and its skin looked like torn and tattered leather, doused in a dark burgundy. Its fingers and toes were composed of hooked claws, like that of a hawk, and jagged spikes were scattered across the backs of its arms, chest, and spine.

The beast’s pupils were horizontal slits, the iris and sclera was filled with a web of blood-red veins. Two vertical indentations in the center of its face were its nostrils, long pointed ears and a mouth full of jagged and protruding teeth looked down towards Arno’s mother, and it smiled. 

She let out another scream, both of fear and of pain as the monster dug its talons further into her shoulders. Arno pushed himself off of the ground and kicked the beast in the side. It whipped its head towards him and and kicked Arno in the chest. Arno flew backwards and slammed against the wall. His head swam. Arno could feel a trail of blood seep down the back of his head and drip down his neck. Just beside the now open window, a cold breeze carried the numerous shouts and shrieks that now plagued Cambrail. There were more out there, they were attacking the village. 

Arno snapped out of his bleary gaze when an unnatural cry came from the beast in their home. He saw Rosaline plunge a knife into its back, and his father trying to pull the talons out of his wife’s shoulders. The beast whipped its wing around and smacked Rosaline aside. Across the room, Arno saw Marie hiding beneath the kitchen table. Her hands were clasped over her ears in a feeble attempt to drown out the multitude of screams that rang through the village and tears streamed down her cheeks. 

With both shaky mind and legs, Arno pushed himself off the wall and stumbled towards his mother. Before he could reach her, he heard another stomach-turning screech, then crunch. The beast was hunched over his mother’s body, blood dripped from its jaw, bits of familiar skin clung to its teeth, and Arno looked down to see a gaping hole where his mother’s throat once was. 

In that moment he grew deaf to the sounds outside of his home. All Arno could hear was the creaking wood beneath the rocking Marie, the groans of pain from the toppled Rosaline, the anguished sobbing from his father, and then, the loudest noise, the sound of chewing from the monster on his mother’s corpse. Arno screamed and threw himself at the monster. They collapsed onto the ground in a tangle of scaley-feeling limbs and snapping teeth. Arno bashed his fists into the creature’s mouth, while it tore at Arno with its claws and spit his mother’s blood into his face. In the thrashing, Arno’s fingers found the knife that his sister lodged into the monster’s back, and he pulled it out only to bring it up and stab it into its head. The knife rose and fell in a panicked, bloody, mess, and Arno only stopped when the last twitches of the beast finally ceased. 

Its twisted face was now pockmarked with fleshy holes, like the soil before Arno would plant seeds to harvest. Arno looked down at his hands, cut and bloodstained, with dirt still caked beneath his fingernails, and now the bloody knife slipped out of his trembling palm. Slowly, sound from outside his home filled Arno’s ears again, and the attack that Cambrail was facing seemed to still be well underway. 

To his side, Arno watched as his sisters and father began to crawl towards the lifeless form of his mother, all three of them beginning to sob and press their hands against her arms and face, as though they were waiting for her to open her eyes again. 

Arno was so engrossed in the slack-jawed and bloody face of the monster beneath him that he didn’t even hear the front door of his home get thrown open. Neither his family nor himself had time to react as he felt a powerful grip wrap around his torso, while another hand clutched his head from behind and tilted it to the side.

A cold sensation pricked the side of his necks. Arno felt two needles seep into his skin, the feeling was both icy and chilling and fiery, as though a hot poker had been pressed against his skin and then he had been dunked into ice-water. Arno felt blood trail down his neck and down his skin, and he felt all his energy beginning to drain out of him. Arno went slack in the grip that held him, and the cries of his siblings and father grew more and more distant as he felt himself get dragged across the ground. His eyelids grew heavy, his lips too sluggish to move and form words. One blink, and he saw Rosaline stumbling towards him, then another blink, and the entirety of the village of Cambrail was distant in his view. 

* * *

Arno woke with his cheek pressed against the ground. The ground was cold, smooth, stone against his skin. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, as darkness draped over him like a thick blanket. His limbs felt incredibly heavy, he couldn’t even get his fingers to curl. The one familiar thing in this darkness, Arno could smell dirt surrounding him. 

_ Why can’t I move? Why can’t I see? _

Arno strained with his ears. He wanted to hear anything, anything. 

_ Am I dead?  _

Instead of trying to listen for an outside noise, Arno focused inward. He listened for a heartbeat ringing in his ears, thrumming against his chest. He even listened to hear breath slip from between his parted lips. After what seemed like a minute had passed, Arno still heard nothing. 

Arno wasn’t sure how long he had spent in that limbo. The only thing present was darkness, the only sensation that he could feel eventually was two holes on the side of his neck. It felt as though a cold breeze lingered within just that spot upon his skin. Eventually, a noise finally disrupted the numbing silence. 

Something rattled in the distance, heavy, metallic, like some sort of lock. Arno could see a dim light from the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t get his eyes to move. From out of his field of vision, Arno heard muttering and footsteps descend from the light. 

“Come, come, my toy.” 

The footsteps now were on ground level with Arno.

“Wake up, kneel before your master.” 

The voice that Arno heard was a gravely hiss, one of a predator. 

“I said, wake, UP!” 

Arno felt a hand wrap about his back and lift his face from the ground. Still, Arno couldn’t move. He couldn’t react, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even look around. The back of his skull began to throb in a dull headache, one that was gradually beginning to spread to his temples and brow. 

_ I’m dead. I’m dead. Why can I think if I’m dead?  _

When Arno didn’t react, the figure let out a disappointed sigh and lifted Arno over his shoulder. Arno’s eyes remained locked in place. He could only see the back of the figure now, as they approached the light at the top of the stairway. All he could see was a flowing black cloak. 

_ Is this what happens to people when they die? They can think and see through their own dead eyes? _

As Arno was carried up the stairs, he now saw wooden floorboards beneath his kidnapper’s feet. Candles were lit all around the room, and Arno could see wooden furniture as he was carried across the way. The thing’s muttering still carried to Arno’s ears. 

“Another fleshbag can’t bear my gift. Another sack of flesh, wasted.” 

The thing, the man, tossed Arno onto the ground and he toppled on his side. From that position, Arno could see the interior of the room and the face of the man that took him. 

The wrinkles that lined his face and brow were numerous. Coupled with the small size of his eyes, all Arno could see were two, beady, orbs of red. His hair was a mangled, shoulder-length mess, and blood coated the skin of his jaws and neck. Two thin fangs protruded from his top row of teeth and extended downwards, past his lowerlip and a few inches beneath his chin. Arno could barely see his the man’s hands, but he could make out the beginning of claw-like fingernails. 

_ Vampire. He’s a vampire.  _

The vampire turned and walked towards the other end of the room they were in, and it was then that Arno noticed the skeleton that hung up on the far wall. It was suspended in the air through a mixture of leather straps and string, and the bones shined brightly in the candlelight. It was picked completely clean of any flesh and blood. The vampire walked towards the bones, then stopped a foot away from the suspended corpse to face himself in a mirror. 

“I, Master Vareth, will have my loyal disciple. I will make one of these sheep into my aide.”

Arno saw a drop of blood fall from his chin and onto the floor. 

“One of them will survive eventually, one of them. I must continue to pick and feed, let the thralls eat the useless and feed on the strong.”

Vareth turned back towards the prone Arno, and now began to lick his lips over his teeth. The long cloak and robe he wore masked his legs entirely, it looked like he was gliding an inch off of the floor towards Arno. Arno willed all his strength in his limbs, an unseen struggle to get his body to move, to get his heart pumping, to resist this state of death. 

The vampire was close now, Arno stared at the dark robes in front of his face. He felt Vareth’s clawed fingers drag down his neck and then wrap about Arno’s jaw to life his face to his own. Arno could see the hunger in Vareth’s eyes now, he could see the saliva beginning to drip in long strings down either side of his mouth, and he could feel Vareth’s nails begin to dig into his skin and draw blood. 

As Vareth’s mouth opened, Arno finally felt a flicker of something within him. It was a single noise, one that was thunderous in his ears and sent an earthquake-like tremor through his body. He heard his own heart beat. 

Arno slammed his head forward. He felt Vareth’s teeth scrape against his forehead and tear at his skin, but he also heard a sickening snap come from one of Vareth’s long fangs. A pained howl shook the very cabin the two of them were in as Vareth recoiled in surprise. Arno pushed both his arms forward and drove them into Vareth’s chest. To his surprise, Vareth was rocked backwards a number of feet, enough time for Arno to rise to his feet. 

Arno looked across the room, and one moment Vareth was in his black robed heap on the ground, and the next he suddenly vanished from sight. Arno looked around, bewildered. Before he could take a step forward, Arno felt claws tear across his shoulder and rip into his skin from behind him. He whipped his head around, bleeding and with ragged breaths, but Vareth had vanished again. 

_ What is happening? _

He stumbled backwards. His hands clung to the walls for support as he walked across the room, towards the door that was just beside the strung up skeleton. Each whisper in the air, each shift and disturbance in the room set Arno on edge, he could feel every micro-hair on his body rise at the near imperceivable noises, but Vareth was still nowhere to be seen. Arno turned his head forward and couldn’t help but glance up at the skeleton that remained hung up on the wall. Its jaw was slack, it looked like it was laughing down at him. Arno could see individual etchings on the bones from this close. There were names written into each piece. Some of them familiar, family names from Cambrail, while others seemed much older from previous generations. 

Just as Arno made to reach for the locks of the door, he heard the barest whisper of cloth brushing against wood. 

Arno reacted quickly. Quicker than he had ever moved before. It came from an instinctual thought that he didn’t even know he had. His right hand reached upward and he yanked free one of the rib bones from the skeleton. His bare-feet turned on the floorboards, his heel spun just as the noise approached from behind him. In one fluid motion, Arno buried the rib bone of the skeleton into the onrushing Vareth’s chest as he spun around to face him. 

Vareth whipped his head back and screeched, his screech was so shrill and pained that the sole boarded up window in the cabin began to crack. From his ears, Arno felt trails of blood begin to seep down. But this newfound instinct kept him from running, kept him from doubling over from the pain. Vareth remained motionless, seemingly bound to the improvised stake in his heart, and with his head tilted back… Arno’s eyes were glued to his exposed neck. 

A newfound sensation of rapidly growing teeth passing over Arno’s lips came to the back of his mind. Somewhere in his subconscious, he was screaming about the unnatural nature and feelings of it all. But that voice was weak. Arno lunged forward and dug his teeth into Vareth’s neck. It wasn’t a graceful bite, it was like a dog tearing into a steak. Arno whipped his head from side to side, tearing off skin from Vareth’s neck and spitting it to the ground. All the while Vareth’s pained screeching subsided into weak attempts to push Arno away. When a sizeable chunk of his neck was torn open, Arno pressed his lips to the open flesh and rapidly pouring fountain of blood, and he drank and drank. 

The taste brought life back into his limbs. The taste set Arno’s mind into an energized frenzy. Arno continued to bleed Vareth out until the entirety of his torso, neck, and lower half of his face was caked in the vampire’s blood. 

When Vareth’s already pale skin was dried into a sunken, parchment like fold, Arno dropped the man to the ground and fumbled with the lock on the door until he could push it open and step outside. 

He was in the heart of the Noosewood forest. The familiar, dark, leafless trees brought the subconcious human side of Arno back into the forefront of his mind. It was then that he chose to ignore the reality of what he had just down, what had just happened, pushed aside only by the thought of his family. With only a hunch in his gut, he began to sprint through the forest and towards where Cambrail was. 

Arno wasn’t sure how fast he was moving. At times, he felt himself fade into shadows entirely and reappear hundreds of feet ahead of where he previously was. He was moving through the shadows cast by the night and by the trees. He was a clot of darkness through the night, he was a shadow himself.

_ Shadeshifting. Like Vareth.  _

Travel through the Noosewood was quick. When he was lost for direction, he simply waited a moment to strain his ears and listen for the sound of Cambrail. This level of perception wasn’t possible for humans, and even though the truth of what Arno was now still was something he repressed, he utilized its gifts to the fullest at this time. When the only noises that Arno could perceive of Cambrail were screams, he quickly realized it was still the same night. Only a handful of house must have passed before those monsters, those  _ thralls _ like Vareth had mentioned, began their attack on the village. 

_ I can still save my family.  _

Arno’s spring finally brought the edge of the forest into view, and the walls of Cambrail into the forefront. He looked up at the top of the wall, what looked to be twenty feet tall, and he balled his fingers into fists and pushed himself upwards. 

Momentarily, Arno became a blotch of moving darkness, then at the top of the wall he reappeared and landed with his feet on the rampart. Like that, he darted through the village. He didn’t pause to help any of the people that were barricaded within their homes, he could hear all too clearly their groans of pain, their whimpering cries, their grief over their loved ones. Arno could hear the village guard locked in combat with some of those beasts. None of it mattered, he was close to his home. 

The back of the Griez home came into view, and Arno’s pace didn’t stop. He didn’t turn to run towards the front door, instead he willed himself into shadows again and shifted right through the wall and into the bloody, tossed, main room of their home. 

His mother’s body was still there. Over her corpse was a clean white bedsheet. Arno looked around the room, and he heard his siblings and father before he saw them. 

“Papa, Rosa, I--” 

His father rushed towards him with a flaming torch lit in his hand, he swung the flame to and fro, letting out an anguished roar as he careened towards Arno. The fire brushed against his skin, the proximity of it sent sharp jolts of pain through his body and portions of his clothing caught ablaze. Arno backpedaled, crying out in surprise and pain. 

“Leave monster! You bloody demon from hell! Leave my fucking family alone!”

The anger and pain behind his father’s shouts made Arno take even more steps backward, all the while trying to bat out the burning pain he felt on his skin. Hiding behind the flipped over kitchen table, he could sense Rosaline and Marie crouched behind it, their quickened breaths were clear as day to Arno’s ears, as was their tremors through the floorboards in fear. 

_ I’m a monster. I’m the monster that they saw.  _

It was only when Arno saw his own reflection in the small mirror that hung just before the doorway of the home that the reality finally hit him. 

Dried blood covered his cheeks and jaw. His face was covered in cuts, two fangs protruded over his lips just like Vareth. His eyes, that were once a bright chestnut, now were a dark burgundy that shined blood red in the light. Arno looked down at his hands, and his fingernails were hardened claws. Without another word, Arno shifted through the door and ran into the night.

 

* * *

For the next sixty years, Arno would safeguard his home and family. He pruned the Noosewood clean of the thralls that Vareth had created and the other monsters which lurked in the woods. Arno would make that bloody cabin in the heart of the forest his home, and he would ensure that his family lived the rest of their lives without fear. 

Arno’s father passed away in his sleep. 

Rosaline found the love of her life in Beatrice Morgan, and they spent the rest of their life together. 

Marie found a husband and had a single child before passing away from illness. 

Arno’s village, Arno’s family, all gradually recovered from the attack and aged. Arno was present for each of his family’s funerals, all while he himself hadn’t aged a day since he was turned. 

With his self-imposed promise to protect his family until they passed away fulfilled, the vampiric side of Arno’s mind held more presence as of late. He forced himself over the years to feed on common game, even on thralls. He hadn’t truly fed since he killed Vareth. The vigor, the strength, it all was a memory in Arno’s mind. And he knew that taste would never be fulfilled with blood of animals, or blood of humans. 

_ No. They won’t sate me. _

Arno finally set off from his small village of Cambrail with a single craving. 

_ Vampire blood.  _

**Author's Note:**

> This is an original work and an original set of characters I've created just to make my own touch on Vampires and monsters in this gothic-type setting. It's something I've always wanted to get into and I hope you've enjoyed it.


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